A Belgian architect, anticipating a 50cm rise in sea levels by the end of the century, has designed a floating refugee city.  And it looks like a lilypad.

Vincent Callabaut’s amphibious city–bearing the name of its inspiration, lilypad– is a car-free, clean energy utopia that can support 50,000 people with no external supplies.  With wind and solar power providing renewable energy, and rooftop gardens allowing for food production, it’s the most efficient, advanced, self-contained community ever imagined.

Why Do We Need This?

Humans inhabit very little of the earth overall, but there’s a reason for that:  we’re generally not in places where it’s difficult to survive.  Combine that with the Earth’s booming population, and you’ll begin to see why it’s worth figuring something out for after the rising sea levels brought on by our carbon-heavy lives begin to reclaim some of the land we inhabit.

Even if you set aside some of the more hysterical estimates of sea level rise, it’s estimated that by 2100, we’ll already see low-lying islands gone forever. The thought of an extra foot and a half of water can’t be terribly comforting to the Dutch or the citizens of New Orleans, either.  Even though some of these places will survive by raising and reinforcing floodwalls, others are going to be reduced to navigational hazards for container ships.

Where Would It Go?

The lilypad floats, so it’s obviously ocean-or-lake-bound somewhere; in terms of vulnerable areas that could suffer greatly in the likelihood of an elevated sea level, you’re left with the usual band of sea-level ne’er do wells (all of Holland, NOLA, Miami, every city on the beach everywhere).  But what about thinking outside the box?  This is a fantastic way to get infrastructure established in a community-oriented, eco-friendly way in developing countries all over the world.  Africa, Southeast Asia, comprehensive disaster relief efforts all over the world–it could be as simple as towing one of these massive lilypads, or a smaller, purpose-built version, into an area of concern.  All the benefits of prefabrication would still apply…to the entire city.  And it would be green.  That’s a side effect of global warming that we can almost look forward to.

More Reading:

Drift Around The World (Sydney Morning Herald)

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